On Mar 5, 2012, at 10:21 AM, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 10:15 AM, Mark Watson <watsonm@netflix.com> wrote:
>> On Mar 5, 2012, at 8:48 AM, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
>>> As I suggested earlier in this email, the best solution for the web is
>>> to wait for the movie distributors to crack and agree to sell videos
>>> without DRM. We can *afford* to wait, after all, since the status quo
>>> works. The falling rate of plugin installation, though, hurts the
>>> distributors as long as they insist on using them for DRM.
>>
>> What you are proposing is that W3C use its role as steward of the web platform to encourage changes in the terms on which third-party commercial services are offered. This is clearly a commercial goal, which I don't see represented in the W3C mission. A decision to adopt this goal would surely need to be made at a senior level in W3C, with advice from the AC.
>
> Only indirectly, insofar as we require commercial services that wish
> to work through the web platform to operate on top of technologies
> which are open-source and royalty-free. This is a reasonable goal,
> and consistent with our history.
Today we have non-RF plugins and codecs. You want to remove support for those ?
>> Are you saying copyright infringement doesn't matter, because you believe - wrongly - that it doesn't hurt one part of the industry ?
>
> I'm saying it's irrelevant, yes.
So, this view is at odds with some pretty basic principles of intellectual property which underpin the industries we are talking about. Again this view is not supported in the W3C mission.